- Welcome to the Let's Talk CJ podcast.
I am your host, Dr. Pat Nelson, a member
of the Department of Criminal Justice at Minnesota State
University, Mankato.
Thank you for joining us, as we explore different topics
about criminal justice and also profile
current and retired professionals
from the criminal justice system.
We hope you learned something new things
about these topics and amazing people, so please enjoy.
Thank you for joining us today for this episode of Let's Talk
CJ, as we talk with retired Lieutenant Jody Nelson, who
spent about 25 years in law enforcement
and was really part of that first wave of women joining
law enforcement in the 1980s.
She served as a dispatcher at the Itasca County Sheriff's
Office in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, then
a part time police officer in Pierz, Minnesota.
Then she served as a federal police officer for the Federal
Protective Service stationed at Fort Snelling, which covered
the entire Twin Cities area.
Finally, she joined the Minneapolis Police Department
in January of 1986 and retired in May of 2006.
And for full disclosure, in case I slip, she is my mother,
and I'm very proud of her and consider her a mentor.
And she was married to a law enforcement officer
and has a father that was a law enforcement officer.
So if I'm a blue blood, she is definitely a blue blood.
So thank you for joining us, Jody.
So can you start with telling us,
how did you decide to get into law enforcement?
- OK.
Well, you know, my dad was a police officer,
and he was a deputy Sheriff in Adams County, Colorado.
And then we moved to Alaska, and he was a police officer
in Seward, Alaska.
It was one of those things that I wanted to be like my dad,
so being in law enforcement was one of those things,
but you have to take into consideration
this was late '60s, early '70s, and women in law enforcement
really wasn't the thing.
But I had met my future husband, who
was a military policeman when he was stationed
at Fort Richardson, Alaska.
I met him in Seward, and we then got married.
When we married, he had become a conservation officer, or a game
warden, back in those days, in Minnesota where he was from.
We moved to Pierz because that was his duty station.
Back in the day, as I call it, being the wife of a game
warden, you answered the phone.
If your husband was out and working
and those type of things, you were basically his dispatcher.
Because everybody would call the house and go, oh, yeah,
we've got a deer that was hit by a car.
Can you come pick it up?
Or it's still alive, can you come and take care of it?
Those type of things.
So being a wife of a conservation officer
also gives you a lot of the law enforcement type of background.
- So I just want to clarify, so when you say back in the day,
we're talking about the early 1970s, right?
- Yes.
- Yeah, OK.
- Yes.
Unfortunately, he was killed in the line of duty in 1975,
and from there, I was still trying
to figure out what I wanted to do with my life and everything.
And the Sheriff of Itasca County was a retired game warden
that I knew, and when a dispatcher's position
came open, I asked if it would be possible
if I could take that position.
And he said, sure, no problem.
Dispatcher did not need to have any kind of education
because didn't have any education at that point in time
and everything, and it worked well
because I was the night dispatcher, so that my kids,
they had a babysitter who stayed with them, while I worked,
and I worked the night shift, and I took care of my kids
during the day.
One of the best stories that I can tell you
about being a dispatcher, because this goes back
to women in law enforcement, was that one night, a lady
had called and wanted a deputy.
And at that time, the deputies went home at 2:00 o'clock
in the morning.
There was no reason to have a deputy on from 2:00
until 7:00 because there was very few calls.
And if you needed them, you called them out.
Anyway, a little, old lady--
you could tell by her voice that she was a little old lady
and that called and said, I need to have a deputy.
And it was just a matter of she wanted
to talk to somebody at that point in time.
And I said, well, unfortunately, I'm
the only one who is on duty right now.
You can talk to me.
And she goes, well, if you're the only one who's
there that I can talk to, this county is really falling apart.
- But you were basically, you were the entire county law
enforcement from 2:00 AM to 6:00 AM
until the deputies came back on then.
- That's correct.
Plus I was also the jailer, because it was a dispatcher
jailer position, so anybody that was in jail
was also my responsibility and everything.
But like I said, I chuckled about that for many years,
because you could tell that she was going, you're a female.
I just-- that's not right.
We're in big trouble if it's a female who's
actually responsible here for our county and everything.
- So then how did you end up going to the position in Pierz?
- OK.
Because of-- let's see.
How do you put this?
Because of my life and that type of thing,
I had decided that instead of living
in Grand Rapids and that type of thing, that I'd rather be back
in Pierz, where I had lived for five years with Russ,
my husband, and I had friends there and that type of thing.
My kids were only four, four, and two
when we moved to Pierz and everything.
Well, once I got to Pierz and I lived in Pierz for about
a year, I guess it was, and once again,
being familiar with the law enforcement
people there, the chief of Pierz, Herman Hoheisel,
had approached me and said, would you like to become--
and this was in 1980.
He asked if I would like to become a part-time police
officer.
And I said, oh, that would be perfect.
This is what I'm looking for and everything because part time is
supposed to mean part time.
And you work when the chief tells
you and that type of thing.
And it was five or six hours, maybe three or four times
a week, which worked out well.
Once again, in Minnesota, to be a part-time police officer,
you didn't have to have the education requirement.
You had to do a certain number of hours of continuing
education, but it wasn't that you
had to have at least a two-year degree
and have to go through skills and all
of those kind of things.
So like I said, the part-time position worked out perfectly
for me and everything.
And the thing there was that it got
to be that the chief went, oh, this is great.
I've got Jody.
She'll work anytime I ask her to,
and it basically became I was working the full-time position,
and he was working the part-time position.
After an incident where he ended up in trouble and everything
like that, I went this is absolutely ridiculous.
There's no reason that I should be doing this.
So I might as well get the education
so that I can actually work full time for a department.
And trying to do logistics with kids and everything
like that, I made arrangements with my sister, who
lived in Wisconsin, to live with her,
while I went to school, because Waukesha Technical Institute
had a law enforcement program.
So I picked up the girls, and we moved to Wisconsin,
and that only lasted about six months, no not even six months,
a semester.
- A semester, yeah.
- It was a semester and everything,
and I decided that this just isn't working.
I can't live with my sister.
I'm sorry, and everything.
So I made an application to Hennepin County--
- Hennepin Technical College.
Hennepin Technical College.
It's called Hennepin Technical College now.
That's the name of it now.
- OK, yeah, but I think it was called Hennepin Community
College back at that time.
Anyway, whatever.
But I got an application, and I got
accepted into the two-year law enforcement program.
I basically put the two-year program into a year.
And once I got through the program there,
a position for the Federal Protective Service
came available out at Fort Snelling.
- OK, I'm going to stop you for a second.
How many women were in your class during college?
Do you remember?
Were there a couple?
Were there a handful, anything like that?
- You know, I really don't remember.
I was so focused on I need to get this done,
and going to school night and day and all those other kind
of things, really, I can't tell you how many.
There was probably a handful, but I don't know for sure.
- So we know you looked up to your dad.
How did your dad react when you told him
you were going to school for law enforcement?
- Actually, he was very proud of me becoming a police officer,
but other than that, he really didn't say anything in regards
to it.
But like I said, he was proud that I became a police officer.
- Yeah, I can just say from personal experience
he held that very close to his vest
until he was much older in his life,
about how proud he was of both Jody and myself.
OK, so why was the Federal Protective Service
position appealing to you?
- Because the Federal Protective Service,
it liked the idea that I had a two-year degree,
but it didn't require me to have a two-year degree,
but the other thing that it did is it sent me to FLETC,
down in Georgia, which basically,
is the federal government skills course.
- Yes, the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center
is what FLETC is, so Yep.
- Yes, and basically what that did is, they paid my skills.
And once I came back, it meant I could take the Reciprocity
Test with Minnesota to become qualified as a Minnesota police
officer.
- So you took kind of a step-wise path getting those
education requirements and skill requirements, but you got it.
You got to the point where you could
be licensed in Minnesota if you took the Reciprocity test.
That was good.
So when you were down at FLETC, do you
remember being with other women, or was it mostly men?
Do you remember?
- No.
Actually, at FLETC, in my class, I think we had five females,
and like I said, being with the federal government,
they were from all over the United States.
So there wasn't anybody else from Minnesota
who was in my FLETC class.
- Do you remember how big your class was?
Was there about 50 in your class?
- No, I would say that there was maybe 40, at the most.
I don't even think it was that much.
- The only reason I ask is that historically,
from that very first wave of, really,
women entering law enforcement in the 1980s,
even through today, we are only seeing
a really steady 12% female.
So having five females in your FLETC class
in a class of 40 or 50 is still holding
right at that same number that we see.
It's just amazing we haven't increased that historically.
- That's correct.
- So you came back and worked with FPS,
and I hope you don't mind, I'm going
to skip a little bit of FPS, although what do you think
was the most challenging part or unique part of that job?
- Basically, with FPS was the fact
that I was the only one out there, because I work nights.
And once again, I was the only one
out there for all of the Twin Cities areas
for the federal buildings and that type of thing.
So once again, it's that they put you out there
and say, do your job and do as you're expected,
and it's still the fact, like you said,
is that there wasn't that many females in law enforcement.
So I'm going to digress for a second
because before we get to Minneapolis.
I always say this because I am much taller than my mom.
When they talk about women in law enforcement,
one of the criticisms for a long time was, they're too small.
They're not strong enough.
And my mom is 5' 3" on a really good day
with the right shoes, right?
And I'm about 5' 10", so I've got my mom on height,
but did you ever feel like your size was a disadvantage?
- No, I never felt my size was a disadvantage,
and one of the reasons is is because when I was a part-time
police officer in Pierz, one of the educational things that I
had done was doing a self-defense class.
And everybody else that was in the class
were guys and had decided that, well, we'll
show Jodi you know what this is all about.
Well, the first guy that came at me--
because I had taken enough, I knew
enough of how to protect myself and everything,
and the pointers that they were giving
and everything like that.
So I just leaned down, through the guy over my shoulder,
and he ended up flat on his back,
and everybody laughed and had a good time.
And after that, they went, don't mess with her,
because she knows how to take you down.
So like I said, but that's where it was.
And my size had never really--
I never really thought anything about it.
I'm not a little, petit person and everything.
I'm short, but I'm stocky and everything.
But I think that where a lot of the times that some
of the criticism comes in about the females
are the ones that are 5' 2" and weigh less than 100 pounds,
that you're going, oh, anybody could pick her
up and throw her wherever.
- Right.
But there's definitely defensive tactics and things
that people any size can do.
I mean, size does not make the police officer.
Size does not make a good police officer.
Well, thank you for letting me cut in on that.
I just wanted anybody listening to have a visual of that.
So why Minneapolis?
How did you end up in Minneapolis?
- Well, one of the things is working
for the federal government, they can transfer you
anywhere they decide to, and I did not
want to leave Minnesota, and unfortunately, I
did not have enough seniority for when they started
moving people out of Fort Snelling,
because they were downsizing, to be able to stay there.
And Minneapolis was hiring, and so I applied to Minneapolis,
and it was one of those things that I had experience,
I had the education, I already had skills,
and those were the type of things
that they were looking for at Minneapolis and hiring.
- So how many women were in your class when you got hired?
- You should have asked me this beforehand,
so that I could have counted.
- It's OK.
It was probably a handful, right?
- I think it was--
let's see, it was Nancy.
I think there was six.
- OK.
And what size was your class that got hired?
Do you remember?
- Probably 35.
OK, so yeah, we're still holding at that same percentage,
so all right.
So you get hired.
You start with an Academy in Minneapolis.
Now, I assume all of your Academy cadre officers
and instructors were male, right?
- Yes.
- So anything significant in the Academy
that you can remember or just kind of went through it
and then got out on FTL?
- Well, you also have to realize is I was much older
when I got hired at Minneapolis than most of the people who
were in my class, because when I started at Minneapolis,
I was 34.
And being already established in my life,
more so of all of a sudden, people
saying you have to do this and this and this
and this and this, and I'm going, ah,
no, I don't, that I butted heads with the training staff
and that type of thing.
But it's one of those things is you have to be a person,
and you have to stand up if they're doing something wrong,
or if it's something that you're going, I can't do that.
They need to figure out that, yes, I'm a female,
and I'm an older female, so what are you going to do in
regards to making things work out just because I'm not
21 years old and I can run five miles without catching a breath
and those type of things.
But like I said, going through the Academy
was a little bit of a challenge on both
my side and the administration side,
but like I said, once I got through it, it was fine.
- I'm just throwing this out here.
I don't know if you know it or not,
you were the only one that was an actual mother
during the Academy for your class, right?
- That's correct.
- Do you know if you were the first one that had
kids to go through the Academy?
Do you know?
Because I mean, most of them came in pretty young
into the Academy setting.
- Yeah.
I never actually thought of that,
but it very well could have been that I
was one of the first ones.
The other females that had came on the Department and that--
well, Marie, when she came on the department was a mother.
Yeah, she had Amanda.
And that was retired Lieutenant Marie Brzezinski,
and she came on about six months before I did.
But like I said, there was not a whole lot of them
because you're right, most of them
were much younger in regards to when
they came on the department, and they were just
out of school and those type of things.
And even the first females that were hired for Minneapolis
in the middle '70s, late '70s, they
were hired when they were young as well,
that they didn't have families established.
- Yeah.
OK.
So you got through the Training Academy, where most of them
were probably younger than you anyway,
and now, you're going to go out to field training.
And I just want to give some context for anybody
listening to this, is Minneapolis works
rotating shifts, so it was rotating eight-hour shifts,
right?
- Yes.
And you rotated through days, dawns, and middles.
in that order.
- Yeah, so that meant every month,
they would change, not only the hours that they were working,
but maybe their days off.
So you didn't know for sure for the entire year what
your whole schedule was going to be,
and Minneapolis still does this to this day where
you pick your days off.
All right, so let's talk about field training.
How did that go?
What were the challenges with rotating
shifts right away while everybody was getting
used to working with Minneapolis?
- Rotating shifts are a challenge,
no matter where you work, and the thing
is the way the rotation does, it's really hard on your body.
And as you know, that usually middle watch was the worst
because day watch, the kids were in school;
middle watch was 2:00 to 10:00.
So your kids weren't home from school yet.
By the time you got home, they were already in bed,
and it went that way.
And then working dog watch, which was 10:00 at night
until 6:00 in the morning was good
because you'd work the night and then you could sleep the day.
But like I said, and then having to do it every month,
I know that Minneapolis no longer does that rotation.
You get to pick your days off, but you also
bid a shift for a year so that you
know that the shift that you're going to be on
is what you're going to be working for the full year.
It's not that, oh, yeah, this month you're working this,
and this month you're working that type of thing.
Like I said, it's one of those things is,
it's something you want to do, you're going to do it,
and it works out because you want to do it,
and I did want to be a police officer.
I thoroughly enjoyed my job.
I would not do anything else, but like I
tell lots of people that go, well, I
want to be a law enforcement officer, you really
need to think about it, because not everybody is cut out to be
a law enforcement officer.
- Right.
So you worked patrol for how long?
- I worked patrol for six years.
- And they were all in the fourth precinct.
- And they were all in the north side in the fourth precinct.
When I first started, the precinct
was up on West Broadway.
The locker room had room for four females, I think it was,
and we had, I think, over the shifts,
I think there was probably a total of maybe 12 females
assigned at that point in time.
So like I said, it was one of those things if you're going
and OK, well, our lockers--
the locker room, like I said, we had lockers for everybody,
but there wasn't a whole lot of room for people.
Where the guys locker room, oh, yeah, hey,
we got all this room, and we got all these lockers and all
that other kind of stuff.
Because that was in '86.
When they moved to the new precinct, which was '88,
'89 maybe, I don't really remember, but like I said,
there we had really nice facilities,
we had a place we could shower, we
had plenty of lockers and a locker room
that wasn't quite as big as the guys,
but it was big enough in regards to future additions of females
for the locker room.
- So what did you like about working patrol?
- Actually, I liked working patrol because,
well, no matter what you're doing,
every day was something different.
Let's see.
I had made some really good friends.
I didn't really have--
I worked with, because Minneapolis always
had two-person squads, they never had one-person squads.
So basically, on the shift, you ended up getting--
sometimes you were partnered with the same person a lot,
other times you sort of got moved around
from this one to this one to this one,
and everything being a female, I ended up
getting moved around a lot and getting
put with the males that the other guys didn't want to work
with and that type of thing.
One instance was that the mail that I got put with the most
had a body odor, and like you said,
being in a squad car with them on a regular basis
and everything like that, it's one of those things
that you're going, oh, how can I do this?
You hate to complain about things,
and you're sort of going, well, I
can go along with this and everything.
I've always been one that had a squad car window
open all the time, anyway so that didn't bother.
Well, it bothered, but it helped that you could keep
the window down and everything.
But when some of the other officers that I worked with
started saying, well, we don't want
to work with him because, oh, my god, the smell and everything
like that, I went, you know, if everybody is complaining,
why hasn't somebody said something to the supervisor
to say something to this person of maybe
you need to do a little bit better hygiene and everything?
Well, since I ended up working with him the most,
I went to the sergeant and I said, could you just
talk to him and say, it'd be nice
if you'd take better hygiene.
Well, once he got talked to, well then
he told everybody that it was my fault that he got
in trouble, even though everybody else was going,
oh, thank god she said something,
because now we can actually ride in the car
with him, because he listened to it and everything like that.
But like I said, I ended up being the bad guy
because I was the one who actually complained,
and they said, well, it was because she was a female
that she complained, even though all the guys were complaining,
but they wouldn't go to the supervisor.
- Right.
Yeah.
Well, that's actually pretty common,
where the one person that says something,
especially if they're a female versus a male.
- Yes, definitely.
- So you worked patrol, and then you took the Sergeant's test.
Why did you take the Sergeant's test,
and what did you hope to do being a Sergeant?
- Like I said, being a little bit older
and that type of thing, the Sergeant,
after being a police officer, the Sergeant is the next rank.
Taking the Sergeant's test was one
of those things of moving up in rank,
where you do different jobs.
You could either become a street supervisor,
you could become an investigator in Minneapolis.
You had to be a Sergeant to be an investigator,
and it was just the natural order of things in regards
to it.
Usually most people who do--
at that point in time, you had to have at least five years
on as a police officer before you could take the Sergeant's
test and everything.
So like I said, it was just a natural sequence in regards
to the job.
- So when you first got promoted to sergeant,
you ended up being an investigator.
What did you investigate?
What did you like being an investigator?
- I was promoted to sergeant, and I became a sex crimes
investigator.
I did four years in sex crimes.
- As an investigator.
It always sounds weird when you say that to somebody
from the outside, but she was an investigator in sex crimes
for four years, yes.
- Yeah, I was an investigator in sex crimes for four years.
During that four years, we had a serial rapist
that I was on the task force that we ended up catching him,
and then one of the cases that I had that I was the primary on
and everything was a guy who was breaking into houses
in the middle of the night and always had a mask on,
always wore dark clothes and everything,
but he would talk when he was sexually
assaulting the females inside their houses and everything.
We actually got a conviction on him, and a lot of it
was because the females could recognize his voice.
So like I said, it was one of those tricky investigative
cases of trying to go, OK, how are you
actually going to do this?
Thankfully, we had DNA, so that helped in regards to it.
But like I said, if they wouldn't
have been able to recognize his voices, even with the DNA,
we probably would have had a hard time
because DNA was just coming into play at that point in time.
The DNA was not really trusted to say,
yes, this was positively him, where nowadays, oh, yeah, we
got their DNA.
You're definitely the person who did this
because this is your DNA.
So like I said, that was the other one.
And then one of the other ones that I actually
did that I was primary on and everything.
And I don't brag about this, but when you have a bad cop,
something needs to be done, and I ended up
getting a police officer convicted because he
had sexually assaulted a female that he had stopped for drunken
driving, and he sexually assaulted her
in the back seat of the police car.
- And you're right, when you have
a cop that's doing bad things, you have to do the right thing
and stop them, and I agree with that.
- But like you said, once again, this goes back to, well,
she's just picking on him because she's a female
and everything like that.
But like I said, he was--
- He was convicted of that one.
- He was convicted of it and everything,
because he did some stupid things.
And we had really good evidence because he
was stupid in the way he did things.
But like I said, he may very well have gotten by.
He may very well have gotten by with doing it
if the female hadn't been so adamant and upset that he did
this to her and with him being where we were able to collect
the evidence to show that he actually
did this was very important.
- Yes.
So after sex crimes, where did you go after that?
- After sex crimes, I went to--
oh, what was it called?
Can you help me out?
- You have to tell me what you did,
and I can tell you what it's called.
I can't remember.
- Oh, where I did the gambling.
- Oh, you did the vice.
No, it was the--
- Gambling enforcement.
- Gambling enforcement and permits,
and yeah, I don't remember what it's called anymore,
but yeah, so the gambling enforcement and the permits
to carry, permits to purchase, that whole area there.
- Yes, and everything.
And like I said, that one, it was OK.
It was one of those things that you're going, all right,
it's something different and that type of thing.
But like I said, I didn't think that I did anything outstanding
there, but then I got promoted.
I took the Lieutenant's test, and I
got promoted to lieutenant.
- But before you got promoted to lieutenant,
didn't you get to go to the Southern Police Institute,
or was it after you were lieutenant?
- Oh, yeah.
No, you're right.
Yeah, you're right, actually.
- So can you talk about that process a little bit,
about the Southern Police Institute versus the FBI
Academy?
Because they're both, on par, the same kind of thing.
- OK.
The Southern Police Institute in Louisville, Kentucky.
Usually what the department does is
they will ask people if they would like to attend.
It's an administrative course for three months, four months,
maybe, at Louisville, Kentucky, and you
get college credits for going and that type of thing.
They have a selective process of where
they'll take what you have done in the department, what you're
currently doing, where you would like to go on the department,
and then the department decides, OK, this
is the person who gets to go.
I got picked to go in 1995, and like I said,
I went down to Louisville in August
and came back versus the last part
of November and everything.
It's the SPI, which is the Southern Police Institute,
is more of an academic type study versus the FBI,
which is more physical.
- Yeah, the FBI Leadership Institute, the Northwestern
Police Leadership Institute, and the Southern Police Institute
are very equal, except that SPI does focus a little bit more
on academics, FBI is more physical,
and then Northwestern kind of blends the two,
but they are equal credentials for leadership, absolutely.
- Yes, they are.
So like I said, SPI was a great experience.
You meet people from all over the country,
and it gives you more of a perspective of how
to be administration, more so than being an investigator
or on patrol or those type of things.
- And it sets you up very well, because then you
were promoted to lieutenant.
Talk about being a lieutenant.
Is it what you expected--
oh, I know.
Is it what you expected, or was it
different than what you expected?
- Being promoted to lieutenant is,
like I said, one more thing in getting more money,
getting higher in rank in the department.
Because like I said, every promotion you get, you get
paid more for what you do.
Depending on what lieutenant you are
depends on how much workload you are.
If you're a lieutenant on patrol,
it means you have sergeants under you,
as well as officers under you that
being a lieutenant on patrol, your sergeants
do a fair amount of the work.
If you're a lieutenant in investigations,
you're responsible for all of these sergeants that
are working for you, and for the cases
that they're putting together, that it's
a different set in regards to how you work as a lieutenant.
Then if you become a lieutenant in administrative positions,
then you're really not a supervisor
like an investigative lieutenant is or a patrol lieutenant is,
but you're responsible for the administrative parts
of the department.
- And you spent quite a bit of time in administrative,
but you also were a watch commander at times,
and then you were the lieutenant in charge of K-9.
What was your favorite role as a lieutenant?
- You know, I can't really pick one that was favorite
because I liked all of them that I did, and becoming--
actually, I was a lieutenant of patrol
before I became a lieutenant of K9.
- That's true.
- Because I was at the downtown command and everything.
So like I said, part of the patrol lieutenant
was not my favorite because, unfortunately, happened
to do with discipline of officers and those type
of things become very--
I don't know.
I can't tell you the right word.
- It comes draining, and it becomes hard.
It does become hard on a person, yes
- And one of the reasons that when I was lieutenant of patrol
at the downtown command was that there was a sexual harassment
suit that I became involved in that had started
in the third precinct, and then one of the females
who was involved in that sexual harassment suit
got transferred to the Downtown command.
So basically, from there, I ended up
having to deal with that person who did not
want to be at work because of sexual harassment
that had occurred in a different precinct.
Even though it wasn't occurring where
she was currently assigned and everything
like that, she had taken it and went,
I don't want to be there at all.
So like I said, it's one of those things that it becomes
sticky in regards to how it could be handled
and that type of thing.
But you have to handle it the best you can
and going from there.
- And we've often talked, not just myself and you,
but myself and colleagues, how a police department
is like a high school.
There's cliques.
There's gossip.
There's rumors that go around.
And even in a department the size
of Minneapolis, rumors spread and stories
spread, and it's not always accurate information, which
can impact anybody working.
- Yes, very true.
- Well, like you just talked about,
we've heard that very first kind of wave of women
ended up having to sue departments a lot
and that there was a lot of harassment.
Can you talk about your experience?
Did you experience that?
Were you part of anything or the people
in your classes about suing for harassment, or what
was your experience in that realm?
- OK, my experience is, no, I didn't know anybody that--
well, I did know people who sued for sexual harassment.
I have to take that back.
But I was a supervisor of that person and everything,
but the people in my class and the people in the classes
before me, as far as I know, there
wasn't anybody in those classes that actually
sued for sexual harassment.
The next wave, the ones that were hired in late '87,
'88, '89, are where the sexual harassment suits actually
started in Minneapolis.
But like I said, I know of them, but it
wasn't that I was truly that associated with them,
and it wasn't until I was a lieutenant in '96
that I actually ended up having to deal
with a sexual harassment suit.
- So as we're coming to a close here,
I'm going to ask one last thing, and now, this
is kind of shifting personal.
So your daughter, me, I joined the Minneapolis Police
Department in 1997, and we were the first mother-daughter
to work for the same law enforcement
agency in the upper Midwest that we know of for sure.
We don't anywhere else outside of that.
What did you think of me becoming a peace officer
and then working for the same agency?
Did you have any reservations?
- Actually, I was very proud when
you decided that you wanted to become a law enforcement
officer, that you wanted to work for Minneapolis was absolutely
one of those things that I'm going, I can't believe it,
but it's OK.
And we were the first mother-daughter police officers
in Minnesota.
The guys always talk of, well, I'm a third-generation police
officer, and in Minneapolis, there was plenty of them that
were second, third, fourth-generation police
officers, but we were the only ones
that were mother and daughter in Minnesota at that time.
- And I never directly worked for you,
and we never wanted it that way.
I did help with the MDC training,
so we ended up on a couple of scenes
together because you were the watch commander
and I was a responding officer.
But other than that, we didn't really
interact professionally that way, which
was a good thing, in many ways.
But I was always very proud you were my mom,
and I'm very happy with that.
So when you decided to retire, what
did you miss most about the police force after you retired?
- Being in law enforcement, no matter
what size your department is, they're still all family.
And you make some very good friends and that type of thing,
so it's the missing the camaraderie, basically,
of everybody that you worked with.
Because like I said, there's good, there's bad.
You get along with some.
It's just like having a family, some
get along with, some don't get along with.
But it's still the feeling of that if something happens,
you know they're going to be there for you
and that you have some stability in regards to it.
Retiring takes a lot.
For anybody who's thinking about retiring out there,
it takes a lot to get your mind where you can go,
oh, I don't have to go to work today,
and I don't have to worry.
On the news, I don't have to worry about what the news
media is doing, and what's happening
there and that type of thing.
Worrying about something happen to some of your friends
and that type of thing, that never leaves you,
but it takes a lot to get your mind set differently
from law enforcement of being able to say,
I'm retired, and when people go, oh, well,
you were a police officer.
That must have been a very interesting life,
and what did you do and all that other kind of stuff.
As most law enforcement people will
tell you is they don't really talk about their job,
because most people think, oh, it would be interesting.
But once you start telling them, they're going, oh, my god.
So like I said, it's some of those kind of things
that you have to get yourself in a different mindset
when you retire.
- So we're going to close this podcast.
I'm going to ask you to give some advice.
So I can give a lot of my female students advice
on what it's like to be a female police officer,
but the biggest concern I hear from them
is, hi, I can't be a mother and a police officer,
or it's not fair to the kids.
So if I had a student sitting in front of me who
was concerned about that, what advice
would you give them about being a peace officer and a mother?
- Being a mother is hard, no matter what profession
you're in.
If you like the profession you're in,
it's going to show your children how life is
and what they can also do.
I'm a firm believer that being with your--
you have to let your kids live their lives as well.
You can't be there all the time for them.
They have to be trusted, and let go,
and yes, it is hard being a mom, and you see your kids
and that type of thing.
If they grew up with you being a law enforcement officer,
they're just going to be, oh, well, they're
a cop, that's what they do, and it's not
a big deal in regards to that.
I know that your sister, Penny, always had a fear of Mom
not coming home, especially since I was a single mom
and that type of thing.
But it's one of those things is, if something--
I could have been a cook at the school
and got hit by a car walking home from the school.
And it's the same thing of if something happened at work,
it's still going to affect you no matter what your job is.
- Yeah, exactly.
Well, thank you for talking with me,
and for everybody that gets to listen to this,
I know we could talk for hours and hours on this,
and we didn't even get a chance to share stories,
including a basketball game and glasses,
but maybe that's for a future one.
But thank you so much.
I am very proud of you and your career and the great mom
that you were, and I appreciate you taking your time
to talk with me.
- And I appreciate you doing this,
but you have to understand I am so proud of you
for what you have done with your 17 years with Minneapolis
and now, number 11 as a teacher of all of those people going
into law enforcement and how well you do it
and how well your students respond to you.
- Oh, thank you.
Thank you for listening to this episode of Let's Talk CJ
podcast.
If you have suggestions for future episode topics,
interviews, or other areas to cover,
please email us at criminaljustice@mnsu.edu,
or visit our website.
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and thank you for listening.